Name Central Themes What’s Going On? No one can deny that the now ubiquitous email is one of the Directions: Read the passage. Highlight or underline key most useful aspects of the Internet. It is fast, efficient, and ideas in each passage. ecologically friendly. In fact, in 2012, there were 144 billion When summarizing, describe all key ideas from the text. Do emails sent every day; if every one of those emails had been a not include opinions or personal info in your summary. note on a piece of paper, then it has been estimated that e‐mail saves 1.8 million trees every day. E‐mail has transformed the world of business, and keeps friends and families connected. But Create a title for this article: __________________________ is it also turning us all into addicts? _________________________________________________ Email follows what is called the “variable interval reinforcement schedule” in operant conditioning. Operant conditioning means What is the central idea? _____________________________ using reinforcement and punishment to create associations between particular behaviors and their consequences. For example, if you send a child to a time out every time he _________________________________________________ interrupts someone’s conversation, you form an association between interrupting (the behavior) and the time out (the Briefly summarize the article. _________________________ consequence) and the behavior decreases. The same theory works in the opposite way; when you perform a behavior (like checking your email) and are rewarded by five minutes of _________________________________________________ diversion watching the cute cat video that your Aunt Martha forwarded to you, you are more likely to check your email again _________________________________________________ later in hopes of finding something else. Slightly different from operant conditioning, the “variable interval reinforcement _________________________________________________ schedule” creates an association between the behavior and the reward, but not every time; consequently, the subject tends to perform the behavior over and over again, in hopes of securing _________________________________________________ the reward―exactly the same process which drives an addicon to gambling. Because the reward only comes at unpredictable _________________________________________________ times, you tend to perform the behavior more and more frequently. CCSS.RL.7.2 |© www.EnglishWorksheetsLand.com Name Textual Evidence Life in the Middle Ages Society during the middle ages was organized into a feudal system, which consisted of small communities congregated around a central “Lord.” The owner of all of the land in a country was ultimately the king, but because the king could neither protect nor rule all of his land himself, he divided it up into segments called “fiefs” and awarded fiefs to important nobles, typically barons or bishops, in exchange for their contributions of soldiers and/or money to the king’s armies. The Lords lived in a large house or a castle called the manor. People would gather at the manor for celebrations, or for protection, if necessary. Immediately around the manor was the village, which included the church. Farms, which supplied food to the Lord and to the villagers, were in the outlying areas. About 90% of the people that lived under the feudal system in the middle ages were peasants, usually called “serfs.” The Lords protected the peasants, and in return the peasants worked for the Lords. Though some peasants were free and practiced trades like carpentry, baking, and blacksmithing, most were little more than slaves. They worked long, hard days, six days a week for not much more than subsistence. Women worked hard during this period too, and not only at the household tasks that you would expect them to do, like cooking, baking bread, sewing, weaving and spinning. They also hunted for food, fought in battles, and worked as blacksmiths, merchants and apothecaries, midwives, fieldworkers, writers, musicians, dancers or painters. Other women became nuns. Some women were believed to be witches. A famous woman from the middle ages is Joan of Arc, the daughter of a French peasant, who claimed to hear voices instructing her to protect France against the English invasion. Dressed in armor, she led a victorious troop of soldiers against the English in the fifteenth century. But the Middle Ages was rife with ignorance and superstition, and even after her service to her country, Joan of Arc was burned as a witch. 1. What was the benefit of the feudal system to the king? 2. What was life like for the majority of people under the feudal system? CCSS.RI.7.1 |© www.EnglishWorksheetsLand.com Name Nonfiction Reading Comprehension Lyophilization Lyophilization is the scientific name for what you have When you preserve a food by basic dehydration, you probably heard of before as freeze drying. Freeze simply put it somewhere hot and arid (like setting it out drying is useful for preserving perishable foods, as well in the sun, or using a dehydrator, which circulates hot as for making them lighter, and thus easier to air around the food) and the water in the food transport. The idea of freeze drying was popularized by evaporates―but not all of the water. Convenonal the creation of freeze dried ice cream, sold at the Air dehydration only removes about 90 to 90% of the and Space Museum to tourists as an example of moisture, which can slow down spoilage, but will not astronaut food. But freeze drying is not just a novelty. entirely prevent it. Freeze drying, on the other hand, is Hikers often carry freeze dried food because of its light a multi‐part process. First the material is frozen. Then weight, and reconstitute it using available water the surrounding pressure is reduced so that the frozen sources. Freeze drying is also used to manufacture water in the material can transform directly from its instant coffee and some pharmaceuticals. solid phase into a gas. This process is called sublimation, and it is the same process that gradually The idea behind freeze drying is to remove every bit of causes unused ice cubes to shrink in the freezer, and water from a substance. Because the water content in which accounts for the disappearance of snow in the freeze dried items is so greatly reduced, it is less likely winter even though temperatures have not risen to spoil due to microorganisms and enzymes, and if enough for it to melt. A cold condenser chamber or properly sealed, freeze dried foods can remain condenser plates are used as a surface on which the unspoiled at room temperature for many years. Freeze vapor can become a solid again, but this only works if drying also preserves the material being dried, unlike these surfaces are colder than the material being dried. typical dehydrating methods which can cause food to Freeze drying can take days, because rushing the shrink and become leathery (think of dried apple drying process by overheating the food can slices). Freeze drying also allows food to retain its flavor and smell. CCSS.RI.7.10 |© www.EnglishWorksheetsLand.com Name Nonfiction Reading Comprehension change its structure and composition, and one of the intact. objectives of freeze drying is to leave these things 1. Which two words are synonyms? A. freeze drying and dehydration 3. Name three products that are created using B. freeze drying and Lyophilization Lyophilization: C. Lyophilization and dehydration 2. What are the objectives behind freeze drying? Select all that apply. A. reducing moisture content B. extending shelf life C. preserving flavor 4. Explain the difference between Lyophilization and D. preserving smell conventional dehydration. E. making food weigh less 3. Describe the steps involved in Lyophilization. CCSS.RI.7.10 |© www.EnglishWorksheetsLand.com Name Textual Evidence The Six Wives of Henry VIII Henry Tudor, known as Henry VIII, king of England in the 1500s, was the main instigator of the English Reformation but is generally better known for having had six wives. His first wife, Catherine of Aragon, was actually originally his brother Arthur’s wife. But Arthur died at 15, paving the way for Henry, who as 10 at the time, to become king. Anxious to maintain his alliance with Spain, Henry VII, Henry VIII’s father, offered his son Henry to be Catherine’s husband instead. Spain accepted, but it was another seven years before the two were married in 1509. He divorced her 24 years later, because she was unable to bear a son who could inherit his throne. Catherine fought for her and her daughter to retain their titles, but Henry was eventually victorious. Henry’s second wife was Anne Boleyn, sister of one of Henry’s other mistresses. When Anne became pregnant by him in 1533, he and Anne Boleyn were secretly married. Anne’s child, too, was a girl. She miscarried two other children, and her inability to produce an heir soon caused Henry’s attention to wander once again. He became interested in one of Anne’s ladies‐in‐waiting, Jane Seymour. In order to get out of his second marriage, Henry claimed that Anne had committed adultery and that she was plotting to murder him. Of course Anne denied the false charges, but nonetheless Henry had their marriage annulled, and Anne Boleyn was beheaded. Within 24 hours of her death, Henry and Jane Seymour were married. In 1537, Jane Seymour produced a son, whom they named Edward, but Jane died soon afterwards from an infection related to the pregnancy. Henry mourned her death, and considered her his only “true” wife. Three years later, though, he was ready to marry again, and began to consider available women. Anne, the sister of the Duke of Cleves, was suggested to him, and after seeing her portrait, Henry agreed to the union. Henry didn’t like her in person, though, and the marriage lasted barely six months before he divorced her, giving her the title of "The King's Sister" and a large castle in which to live.